


Good Taste

by Siria



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:07:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know that's disgusting, right? You know that's not what food is supposed to do."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Taste

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to dogeared for betaing!

"You know that's disgusting, right? You know that's not what food is supposed to do."

Parker rolled her eyes at him and carried on mixing curry sauce into her bowl of popcorn. "It's spicy and chewy and crunchy—that is exactly what food is _supposed_ to be like." Hardison had a dire suspicion that he'd seen a gummy bear or two floating around in there too, all pathetic and drowning in curry with its little paws raised up like it was looking for somebody to help it. It was a sad, sad fate for a delicious snack food.

It was times like this that he sent up a silent prayer in thanks to his Nana for teaching him patience, because he could be a damned fool and say something, but he wasn't going to. Nuh uh.

"Besides," Parker continued, flopping on the couch beside him and digging her spoon into her curry-gummy-popcorn _thing_, and Hardison wasn't looking, he wasn't, because some things a man just wasn't supposed to see and keep his sanity, "your man who lives in the box eats fish sticks with custard and you don't say anything to _him_ about what he eats."

Hardison blinked at her. Course, even his Nana couldn't work miracles, and it wasn't like he had the patience of a saint. "My man who lives in—my man who lives in the _box_? Okay, first off, that box can travel through time _and_ space, and that man is a doctor and a classic of the science fiction genre and a badass with a sonic screwdriver—you give him the respect of his title. Second, the Doctor is fictional. He is not real. He's a character in a TV show. You get the difference, right? Fiction, reality?" He drew a dividing line in the air with his finger, though the good Lord knew that this was probably something that he would need an instructional Powerpoint presentation to communicate.

Parker made a face at him that was entirely too close to a snarl for Hardison's comfort, but he was cool, he was a grown-ass man, he did not shift down the couch one little bit.

"I'm a bigger damn fool for trying," he muttered to himself, subsiding into the couch cushions and flipping through the channels with the remote. Maybe there'd be a rerun of _Next Generation_ on; couple hours of saying _dude, hell no_, to Wesley Crusher always made him feel better. "Give my precious time to these folks, this is what I get in return—curry-flavoured gummy bears and sass."

Parker licked at her spoon with a contemplative air. "The man in the box is British. I bet they eat stuff like this all the time in England."

Hardison folded his arms and gave her the stink eye.

"That time I did that job in the British Museum," Parker said, digging through the bowl for any last, drowned bears, "I had jellied eels afterwards." She narrowed her eyes. "They jiggled in my mouth. If the British eat that, they'll eat this." She thrust the bowl under his nose. "You sure you don't want some?"

Hardison felt his stomach turn over. "That is foul," he pointed out, "that is _wrong_. A starving dog in the street would not eat that—a starving dog with no _taste buds_ would not eat that. I am not eating that."

"It's an experiment in food," Parker said, scraping the bottom of the bowl with every sign of great satisfaction. "Eliot says that's what haute cuisine is all about."

Hardison boggled, he did; in fact, he was lucky his eyes didn't pop out on stalks like some Looney Toons character. "Haute cuisine," he said slowly, because he wasn't even going to go near whatever Eliot might or might not have said. "You telling me you expect to walk into some fancy French restaurant and find them serving that up on a plate?"

"Don't be silly," Parker replied. "In a French restaurant, they'd use Béarnaise sauce."

He looked up at the ceiling. "Nana. Nana, what did I ever do that was so wrong that I deserved this. Okay, there was that stuff"—he flapped his hands in a way that meant _securities fraud_ and _theft of hundreds of millions of dollars_ and _hacking into the Pentagon's intranet_—"but ain't none of that mentioned in the ten commandments, and this is like, a whole new circle of hell up in here."

The ceiling was resolutely silent. Beside him, Parker put the now empty bowl down on the coffee table and deftly stole the remote control from him. "That is _my_ TV," Hardison reminded her, but to no avail.

"Ooh," Parker said enthusiastically, perking up when she found the channel she was looking for—all big eyes and curling blonde hair, like some kind of anime character; Hardison half expected her to clap her hands in glee—"it's a marathon of _Deal or No Deal_!" She folded her legs beneath her and stared avidly at the screen.

Hardison sighed. There'd be no moving her for the next two hours, not unless he found away to have a cash delivery truck break down right outside their building—Parker seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction from yelling at the contestants that they should just grab all the suitcases and run. "I'm just going to go let Eliot punch me in the head some," he said, heaving himself off the couch.

"Okay!" Parker said without looking away from the screen. "Bring me back some more gummy bears from the kitchen when you're coming."

"Uh huh," Hardison said flatly and shuffled off down the hallway. Outside of the bathroom he bumped into Sophie, who had her wet hair wrapped in a towel and was all pink-cheeked from doing some kind of lady business in there that Hardison did _not_ want to know about—Sophie had explained bikini waxing to him once and Hardison's boys were still kind of traumatised.

He pointed a finger at her. "I," he said, "am a damn fool."

"And some of the fortune cookies, Hardison!" Parker bellowed from the living room. There was nothing wrong with that girl's lungs.

Hardison winced, and tried to act all nonchalant in front of Sophie, like he wasn't going to go straight into that kitchen and get Parker her gummy bears and her fortune cookies.

Sophie, of course, didn't look fooled—she just smiled sympathetically and patted him on the cheek and said, "Oh honey, of course you are—aren't we all?"


End file.
